Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Gonzaga in Next Year's Old Spice Classic

If there is anything we have become used to in the Mark Few era it is that Gonzaga will play top-tier out of conference teams each and every year. This will continue at the beginning of next year when Gonzaga plays in the Old Spice Classic, a preseason tournament held in Orlando, Florida.

Gonzaga will be joined by Georgetown University, the University of Maryland, Michigan State University, Oklahoma State University, the University of Tennessee, Wichita State University and Siena College. Every team in this tournament was a member of a post-season tournament this past year except for Wichita State. The Zags, Georgetown, MSU, Tennessee, and Siena were all in the big Dance and Maryland and OSU competed in the NIT.

The tournament will run Nov. 27-30 featuring twelve games in 3 days. Each and every game will be televised on the ESPN family of networks (ESPN, ESPN2, and ESPNU).

This tournament should provide Gonzaga with the early type of recognition that it needs next year. Most early pools have Gonzaga as a potential top 10-top 15 team. This would mean that Gonzaga, MSU, and Tennessee will all most likely be highly ranked at this time. Full schedules have not been released yet but Gonzaga will undoubtedly have one of the most difficult non-conference schedules once again.

As a side note, Memphis was scheduled to be in this tournament but dropped out. Also, half the field for this tournament have reached the final four in the 2000's. Maryland, MSU, Georgetown, and Oklahoma State.